


better people to love

by Kaesa



Series: Kaesa's Whumptober 2019 fics [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: F/M, Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-canon epilogue, Regency, Sexual References, Stitches, Whumptober 2019, referenced child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: Crowley finds Aziraphale stabbed, on the doorstep of her townhouse.  Needless to say, she takes him in and treats his wounds.  And needless to say, she can't let whoever did this to him do it again.





	better people to love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Whumptober 2019, for the prompts "unconscious," "stitches," "don't move," "adrenaline," and "scars."

Crowley was on her way back from a brief temptation -- poets were easily-tempted creatures, and she'd been greatly enjoying her role as a wealthy widowed patroness of the arts-- when she found him. He was passed out, facedown and not quite on her front step, and she knew he must have put up some sort of 'ignore me, humans' miracle to have lain there unnoticed for so long in his cream-colored suit.

"Aziraphale!" She turned him over and saw blood all over his clothes, and blood on the street, too. She put an ear to his chest; his heart was still beating, but his breathing was labored. And the blood was fresh.

She looked around for any infernal or divine watchers, and seeing none, hauled him into her townhouse and up the stairs to a spare bedroom. She hesitated before undressing him for a few moments, for propriety's sake -- not that she hadn't had a rather vigorous encounter with the poet only hours ago, but Aziraphale was _different._ Crowley decided, though, that Aziraphale would rather the indignity of being in the nude in a demon's presence than discorporating and having to deal with hideous amounts of paperwork.

There were several wounds. The worst one was in his chest -- it bled the most, and looked deepest, and she supposed it must've been a lucky strike, the blade sliding between two ribs. There was another deep one in his stomach, and then were several more shallow ones in his chest, as if the attacker was frenzied or perhaps unaware of the existence of the ribcage. A jagged cut on his forearm suggested he'd put his hands up to protect himself at some point, and obviously not been very successful.

Who had done this to Aziraphale? He could miracle himself out of jams like this most of the time, brief threats of guillotining notwithstanding. Had his attacker been human, or something else?

She didn't think an angel's wounds _could _get infected, but she didn't want to gamble on that, so she cleaned the cuts with hot water as best she could, and tried to bandage them. Then she miracled him into a nightshirt and tucked him in, and lit a fire in the fireplace.

Still he looked pained, and she wondered if it might be too much to lay a kiss on his cheek, or stroke his hair. Surely he wouldn't approve if he was awake.

Aziraphale enjoyed a lot of things he didn't approve of, though. He enjoyed Crowley, for a start.

And so, hesitantly, she reached out to run her fingers through his white-gold hair. "Oh, angel," she said. "Who did this to you? Who do I have to rip to pieces?"

* * *

Aziraphale was still unconscious by dawn, and Crowley was getting increasingly worried, especially as the bandages kept soaking through and having to be replaced. (She was also getting extremely tired of sitting around watching Aziraphale be unconscious, and starting to wonder if maybe she shouldn't have actual servants instead of befuddling humans into thinking she did whenever they visited.) She was examining the wounds when Aziraphale startled awake, and grasped her hand.

"Crowley," he rasped. He tried to smile, but it was nothing like as radiant as his usual.

She squeezed his hand. "I'm here, I've got you. I'm sorry it hurts. I think I'd better call for the doctor, angel, don't you?"

"No!" said Aziraphale. "No, no, don't," he said. He began to wheeze again.

"Can you heal yourself?" she asked, once he'd caught his breath. She knew if she tried using any more-than-mundane means, Aziraphale's wounds would likely end up getting worse.

He shook his head. "Not yet. Got to -- got to rest up a bit. It was a demon, Crowley, I don't know which one. Kept possessing different people." He still seemed to be having trouble breathing. "So I -- I don't want a human doctor in here."

"I'll have to stitch the wounds up myself, then," said Crowley, worriedly. "Is that all right?"

"I'm told the widow Crowley is quite renowned for her embroidery," said Aziraphale, with another pained smile. "It would be an honor."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "You know the last time I had to do anything like this was at least a hundred years ago, right? And it's going to hurt. A doctor could --"

"Human doctors are so often butchers," said Aziraphale, "so I'd rather --"

"You'd rather an amateur butcher you? Look, Aziraphale, if it's the demon you're worried about, I could probably take whoever it is in a fight --"

"Crowley," said Aziraphale. "Please. I don't want you being found out."

And when Aziraphale gave her that pleading look it was so hard to resist him.

It was slow, careful work, and Crowley was acutely conscious of every twitch and gasp of pain that Aziraphale made while she sewed up the worst of the wounds. Embroidery was soothing work you could gossip your way through -- well, unless the embroidery floss got tangled halfway through a thrilling tale you were making up about someone you hated. Suturing was the opposite -- the catgut was unlikely to tangle, but it was absolutely nervewracking, especially when the fabric was your only friend in all of existence. A few of the more shallow ones weren't deep enough to bother with, and looked to be clotting normally, so she decided to leave those well enough alone.

When she was done, she miracled up a fine meal for Aziraphale to have (stolen from one of her neighbors' kitchens, of course; people were forever trying to steal the Waltons' cook away, but Crowley felt stealing the actual food was much more straightforward) and brought up a little stack of books, and told him she had prior engagements to keep.

"Of course," he said. "Do be careful, though. Of the other demon."

"Don't worry about me, Aziraphale. Eat your consommé and rest. And don't judge my taste in novels."

"Of course I won't!" said Aziraphale. Of course he would, she knew.

Before leaving the house, she went back to her own bedroom, and pulled the pistol out from its hiding place among her stockings. Then she took it to the kitchen, and packed it -- very carefully, wearing last season's gloves -- with gunpowder and the fingerbone of a saint, which she'd acquired at great personal risk from the saint himself just before his death. It might not kill the demon outright, but it would certainly eject them from the body they inhabited and send them back to Hell, where Crowley could run rings of red tape around them for horning in on her territory.

And then she left. It wouldn't do to keep the other demon waiting.

* * *

Crowley stepped quietly after the figure shambling down the alley. It could be a drunk, of course, but drunks usually understood what their limbs were for at least as well as Crowley, if not better. Really, most demons should too -- at least, most demons who were authorized to be up on Earth, even if they hadn't been issued a body.

Which meant this one was either very new to Earth duties, or an unauthorized escapee from the deepest circles. Was it trying to _impress _Satan by skiving off work and taking humans for joy rides, or was it going to try and stay here forever? Hell was, obviously, no fun, and not meant to be, which was why Crowley had resolved early on in the history of the world to stay on it as long as possible, but she didn't want anyone else stealing her ideas.

She crept as close as she dared to the thing, currently possessing the form of a large middle-aged man, and crouching in the muck of the street like a pig. She raised her pistol. "Don't move," she said.

One of the man's shoulders twitched, and then moved jerkily as if to withdraw a knife from a belt. "I_sssaid, _don't move," she snapped. "Who are you? Identify yourself."

The man's head turned towards her, slowly. His eyes were wild, and pointing in slightly different directions.

"I am the demon Crowley. _Identify yoursself,_" said Crowley, again. She was beginning to get unnerved. She couldn't feel any demonic aura. She was feeling something, but it was giving her sort of a headache.

"Demon. Crowley?" the man said, roughly.

"Yesss?" she said. Her hands were shaking, but she kept the gun aimed more or less at the man's heart. "Identify yoursself, I ssaid."

Something reached into her mind and it _burned._She fell to the ground, dropping the pistol before she could use it. This was no demon. She didn't know _what _this was but it hurt so much she thought she might discorporate if it stayed too long in her head.

_Please,_ said a chorus of voices. The man's mouth moved, but the sound was not coming from his lips. _Please, help._

"Who are you?" she asked. "_What._ What are you?"

_Please, please, please, _said the chorus, eerily musical. And suddenly she had -- impressions. Impressions of lives, brief human lives full of great torments and little victories. _Many _human lives. Here a bricklayer, there a weaver, several shepherds, one musician. Quite a few children, dead of diseases or infection or starvation after disaster had befallen their parents. No one she knew, no one she should know, really, but there they were, laid before her.

These were escapees, but not demonic ones. Did Hell take _children?_ Crowley had thought there were rules about that. (Convenient rules, too; if a child's death was a victory for Heaven, it gave Crowley an excuse to miraculously keep them out of harm's way.) She needed to concentrate, although this thing's hold on her mind was making that difficult. "You hurt -- you stabbed -- there was an angel," she said.

_Don't want to go back, he would have sent us back, we don't want to go, no no no,_ the chorus of little human lives said.

"And you don't think I will?" she asked. She remembered the gun, and scrambled for it, but the man held it out for her placidly. She took it back, and aimed it at him. "I will, I will send you straight to Hell if you don't --"

And there was _laughter _in her head. Everything burned so badly, her head throbbed with pain and she bit back a scream.

"What's so funny?" she demanded.

_Don't want to go back to **Heaven!** So empty! Too bright! Cold! _ There were other, smaller voices now, _my friends aren't there _and _my beloved went the other way _and _angels are **mean!** _and __I_ miss my mum. _ And Crowley realized why their presence hurt so much.

"I don't think I can help you, and you're killing me," she said. "I can get you to Hell, but that's eternal torment, nobody _wants _eternal torment."

Another wave of pain hit her, and this time, she did scream. She fell back, clutching her head. No words accompanied this one, only a strong sense of love; all kinds of love, love stronger than God and death and millions of angels and the promise of hellfire. Love for the damned. "Well maybe you should have picked _better people to love,_" she snarled, and the response was only more love.

"Fine," she whimpered. "Fine, fine. Get out of my head, I can't stand it much longer. But I'll -- I'll get you into Hell. I know the way. It's a long walk."

The thing in her head assented, and withdrew, and Crowley staggered to her feet.

* * * 

It was a long, long walk to the gates of Hell, and Crowley was exhausted when she and the man full of escaped human souls got to the long-abandoned house in the outskirts of London. Along the way, the souls had tried to contact her several times, and screaming pain had accompanied it each time. They'd given up by now, and she couldn't tell if the man looked more hopeful than he'd been before.

"You'll have to come out of him," she told the souls. "Can't just bring a live human into Hell. He'd probably die, and you don't want that." She considered where these souls wanted to go. "Or maybe you do."

There was a vague shake of the man's head.

"Well. I'll take that as a no." She grimaced. She was not looking forward to this next part. "I can draw you out of him, but you have to leave me as soon as possible, all right? Because you'll destroy me if you linger too long, you're too -- holy. Honestly, I don't even know if they'll take you in Hell. You're certain you'd rather not be ghosts?"

There was no answer -- no gesture, no contact.

"Right. Right, all right. Let me try this." She led the man over to the door of the ruined house. Something inside creaked ominously. "You'll be drawn downwards as soon as you get inside. I... I would rather not accompany you." It could be a huge coup for her reputation -- _bringing souls out of Heaven itself into Hell _\-- but if their holiness were to harm any demons, well. Actually, no, that would still be bad for her reputation. Which was good. Because Hell was ridiculous that way.

She decided to leave the question of being credited for these souls' entry into Hell up to the souls themselves. "And now I will... I will draw you out." She braced herself for the pain as she took the man's wrist, but no amount of bracing herself could make up for the pain of being used as a bridge by these no-longer-saved souls. She struggled to stand, then finally just gave up, letting the pain go through her as the souls passed through. There were five, ten, twenty... and then she lost count, but too many.

It took agonizing ages; she could only stand to let one soul pass through her at once, and some of them did _not _leave her quickly, but stopped to ask questions like _Will I see her when I get there? _or _What kind of torment will I receive? _and she sat there, muttering, "I don't know, I don't _know,_ probably it will be as horrible as possssible, now get out."

The sun was rising as the last soul passed through her. This soul had fallen in love with a noble girl whose family she'd served. The noble girl had killed herself rather than marry her betrothed. The servant had gone on with her life, married, died bearing her third child, and never forgotten the girl she'd wanted to run off with. _Do you think he should he have chosen someone better? she asked._

Crowley knew she was talking about Aziraphale. "He hasn't chosen me."

_If he had. _The woman seemed angry at Crowley now.

"Yes. Yes, he should."

_Should you have chosen better?_

Crowley had no answer to this. "Fuck'ss ssake, get out of my head!" she shouted. "Go on to Hell! _You _wanted thiss!" And the soul left. With that, Crowley was free of the terrible pain of holiness. She released the hand of the man who'd been holding all those souls, and he keeled over.

"You're going to be very confused when you wake up," she told him, and made her way shakily back to her townhouse. The sun was nearly up before she got there, but the pain and stress of the evening was still with her, and her heart was pounding. She quickly miracled herself clean and tidy, then hurried up the stairs to check on Aziraphale.

He was sleeping soundly. He looked... better. Less pale. Still pained, though, and she knew he must be tired if he was sleeping voluntarily.

Crowley knew she shouldn't -- knew she hadn't, in any way, earned any sort of respite, much less actual comfort -- but, well. She'd spent a long, cold, painful night outside shepherding souls into damnation, and there was a warm, soft angel right here in this bed, and all she wanted was to sleep. She used a miracle to move him over without disturbing him or moving the stitches, and crawled into the bed next to him.

It wasn't as though they'd never slept in the same bed, only here and now it wasn't done, it meant something... different, and Aziraphale wouldn't like it, she was certain. Aziraphale would be offended. Aziraphale would be --

"Crowley?" he muttered, sleepily.

She froze. "Yes?" she said.

"You enjoy... the party?" he asked, muzzily. "Or whatever."

"Yes. Very much," she lied. "Met lots of people."

"Good." He rolled over on his side and put his arms around her, and Crowley nearly stopped breathing. "Was worried... you'd go after that other demon," he muttered. "But you're safe."

"Yes, angel, I'm right here and safe," she said. A safe demon. Imagine that.

"Your heart is very... loud," Aziraphale muttered against her ear. The closeness of him was not helping that, definitely.

"Quite a lot of dancing. Very exhilarating," she said. "I'm still terrible at it, in case you were wondering."

"You like it?" Aziraphale asked. What the _Heaven _did that have to do with anything?

"I. Yes?" she ventured.

"I should learn," he said, sleepily, as though this was not a patently absurd thing for an angel to say. And Crowley had nothing to say to _that,_ and if Aziraphale had anything more to add, he must have done it in his dreams only, because soon he was breathing slowly and deeply. His breathing sounded better, Crowley thought, trying to ignore the fact that he _had his arms around her._ But he was very comfortable, and she was very tired, and so, gradually, she fell asleep as well.

* * *

When she awoke again, a little before midday, Aziraphale was up and about; he was apparently just finishing a breakfast he'd conjured himself. "Ah. Crowley. Thank you for your, er, your hospitality, but -- well, I've healed the worst of it and in a few days I shall be good as new." He looked a little pink, which was a good sign for his health, at least.

"Yes. Right. I'm glad to see you're well again," said Crowley, trying not to think about how he must have looked when he'd realized what foolishness his sleeping self had engaged in. And the conversation turned to other things, less harrowing topics than the past day or so had afforded them, and Crowley wished she didn't love him, and hoped he didn't love her, for his own sake.

* * *

Crowley had finally got Aziraphale's shirt all the way unbuttoned and was frantically kissing him, running his hands along Aziraphale's sides perhaps with an aim towards sliding them under the waistband of his trousers, when he encountered the scars

He pulled away and looked at Aziraphale's chest, and saw -- faded, but still very much present -- the knife wounds that Crowley had sewn up for him, puckered on either side where the catgut had gone through. "You didn't miracle those away?" he asked, blinking.

"Didn't really have the energy at first," said Aziraphale. "And then I..." A sheepish look passed over his face. "I decided to keep them."

"Why?" Crowley ran a careful finger over the worst one. Aziraphale shivered. "They're not exactly my best work."

"As proof," said Aziraphale.

"Of what, that I shouldn't be trusted with a needle and thread?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale laughed. "That you -- that you did care, no matter how terrible you tried to pretend you were. That you were safe. That you were _kind,_" he said. He was beaming at Crowley now, and Crowley loved him so much it hurt. "I mean, I didn't really need proof of all that, but I think sometimes you do, and..."

"So what, next time I was being too demonic you were gonna take your shirt off at me?" Crowley asked. Aziraphale snorted. "I mean. Would've worked, actually. Are you telling me we could've got to all this --" here he gestured to the bed "-- a lot sooner had I been really terrible at you?"

"No, no, no," said Aziraphale. "It was -- I knew you could never say it in words, and I could never ask, but I -- I wanted something that would remind me that you cared for me, no matter what had come between us." He caught Crowley's face in his hands and rested his forehead against Crowley's, the most joyful Crowley had ever seen him. "My dear. My _dearest._" And he kissed Crowley again.

Crowley enjoyed the kiss, and the little noises Aziraphale was making into his mouth as he played with the hair at the nape of his neck, and he enjoyed even more when Aziraphale slid his knee between Crowley's legs and pushed him down onto the bed, and aside from some brief, breathless negotiations regarding the problem of removing extremely tight jeans from a demon, for a while their conversation was more in hands and hips and mouths and happy noises than in actual words.

Quite a bit later, when they had enjoyed each other thoroughly and were lying in each other's arms, pleasantly exhausted, Crowley found himself tracing one of Aziraphale's scars again. He'd remembered what the ghost had asked him, about choosing somebody better to love. "Aziraphale... would you have loved me if..."

"Probably," said Aziraphale, blithely. He kissed Crowley. He was stupid with post-coital bliss, and that was fine, but Crowley wasn't reassured.

"It wasn't a demon, you know."

"Sorry?"

"The thing that stabbed you. It wasn't a demon, and it said something to me, well not _it,_ really --"

"Crowley, what on Earth are you talking about?" Aziraphale asked.

And the terror and doubt of that night was back in his head, and he didn't want to be the idiot who ruined something so so good by bringing up something so horrible, but he felt he needed to confess, suddenly, and the words came out of his mouth with little to no control from his brain. "It wasn't a demon that gave you the scars, it was -- it was something else, it was this, this, this whole _group _of human souls and -- and angel, I didn't know what else to do, I couldn't think of anything, I didn't want them to hurt you and --" He was rambling now, rambling and maybe a little weepy, and Aziraphale reached out to pull him close, and he was so solid and warm and comfortable.

"Shh, Crowley, it's all right, whatever happened."

"I don't know if it is?" Crowley said, hesitantly.

"Well, why don't you go on, then, I know whatever you did it must have been... the best you could do, given your constraints." He meant Hell, Crowley knew, Hell and their soul quotas and their deeds of the day, breathing sulfurously down his neck. But not very long ago Crowley would've assumed he meant inherent constraints, and Crowley still thought of those, still wondered a bit.

He swallowed, and went on. "It was a bundle of human souls, escaped from -- this is the difficult part, you'll understand why I didn't tell you, this is -- they -- they had escaped from Heaven, somehow."

"Ah," said Aziraphale. He didn't actually sound that surprised.

"And they were worried you'd send them back there," said Crowley. He felt silly narrating this all to the back of Aziraphale's shoulder, so he pulled back a bit. Aziraphale was listening patiently. Aziraphale wasn't _always _a good listener, but when he decided something was worth his full attention it was the most comforting thing in the world just to be heard. "And. They. They asked me to take them to Hell."

Crowley waited for the change in Aziraphale's expression that would signify horror, or disgust, but it didn't come. "Well. You've been to both," said Aziraphale.

And that said so much, didn't it? Aziraphale had listened calmly when Crowley told him about his trial, and only been a little surprised, and only really horrified that Crowley had had to see all that, not that it had been waiting for _him._ "Yeah. Yeah, only I assumed it'd be better for _humans,_ right? Got to be better for them, they don't have to work for Gabriel, and it's their big reward. But there they were telling me they missed all their family and friends and things like that, and I thought, what the _Heaven _has Heaven been up to up there?"

Aziraphale was quiet for a few moments, and then he said, "Well. I always _hoped _it'd be nicer for them, but I think I always got the impression Heaven was rather more kindly disposed to humanity than it ended up being. And given... well, all of that? I'm not surprised at all. More surprised this hasn't happened more often. Or maybe it has and we never knew about it. So did you get them to Hell?"

Crowley stared at him. "I. Yeah, actually. Hurt like fuck, though."

"Well. I hope they're... happier? Satisfied. Whichever." Aziraphale sighed. "It all sounds very awful any way you look at it, my dear, but I don't see what else you could've done."

"You don't seem very concerned," said Crowley.

"Well. Like you said, they missed their friends," said Aziraphale. "I can't blame them."

"I told them they should've loved better people," Crowley muttered.

And that was when Aziraphale's expression changed. "Oh, _Crowley,_ is that what you've been worried about all this time?"

"No," lied Crowley.

"Crowley, my _dear,_" said Aziraphale, kissing his forehead, his cheek, the tip of his nose, "you are the best person I could have loved."

"Angel, don't be ridiculous, I'm not -- _mm._"

Aziraphale pulled away from the kiss. "And I've loved you for, oh, I don't know how long, really --" He kissed Crowley's jaw, and then his neck "-- but I'm very pleased with my choice."

"Okay, I can't tell if you're going for sappy or horny here, angel," said Crowley.

Then Aziraphale did something at his collarbone that was somewhere between kiss and bite that made Crowley let out an involuntary whine. So, horny, then. "I can do both," he said, "can't I? Anyway, I love you because you're _you,_ my dear, and I don't think I'd miss Heaven even if I didn't, but I'd go anywhere you were." He paused for a moment to take Crowley's nipple into his mouth and circle his tongue around it, which was -- nnh. "I went to Hell for you and I'd do it again if I had to. Shall I go on?"

"Mm. Less talking about Hell, more -- more of the other stuff," said Crowley.

"I thought you might say that," said Aziraphale. His breath was warm on Crowley's skin, and his lips and tongue were warmer, and Crowley was getting _very _interested in where he was going.


End file.
